Hearkening back to the Sony Rootkit brouhaha from a few years ago, a security researcher is claiming in a Network World article that he detected factory-installed keyloggers in two brand new Samsung Laptops. Samsung has made no official response, but a tech support supervisor contacted by the author said that the keystroke logging software was installed by Samsung to "monitor the performance of the machine and to find out how it is being used."

I am agast right now, a goddamn keylogger. I would have thought any company would know better than that. Thought I would have thought the same about rootkits too. Still this is just beyond the pale. All your password, logins, and credit card numbers were just being sent right to Samsung. I don't know what they did with all that data, but I do know what could be done with that data. All it would take is one unscrupulous employee who sees an opertunity to get himself rich.

Yeah. It makes me wonder what their phones and tablets have running in the background. If they're willing to do this on laptops, might they also do it to Android and, since they can, incorporate this into the os at the very lowest levels? It'd be a hell of a lot harder to detect and, without a custom rom to flash these devices with, damn near impossible to get rid of.
I'm glad the only thing I have made by Samsung is my DVD burner. I don't think anyone's figured out how to put key loggers in those... at least not yet.